It’s with a heavy heart that we say farewell to Nozstock Festival. The small festival with a line up and atmosphere that has always gone above and beyond, is sadly opening its gates for the last time next Thursday! Fortunately, it’s final return to the valley at Nozworthy farm (near Bromyard/Hereford) looks set to be a suitably epic send off.
We can’t stress enough that we really love this festival. Our introduction to Nozstock way back in 2018 included interviewing Grandmaster Flash, catching the last ever live performance from UK legends Taskforce and filming our first festival site music video for single ‘Taking Over’ from local Hereford legends Verbal Highz which kicked off a UKHH tradition continued across various festivals to this day. In addition to that, filming some on site bars videos and feasting our ears on a line up that also included Fliptrix, Chali 2na, Verb T, Pitch 92, Aristocrats, various other hip hop infused bits and a tonne of heavy DnB… We generally lost our proverbial marbles and had a whale of a time.
Having cemented a special place in our hearts, the festival continued to surpass expectations in subsequent years. Especially for its size, its consistently supported the UK hip hop scene at a level that puts most other UK festivals to shame. Every year we’ve attended they’ve had heavy hitters on The Garden Stage and various other hip hop diamonds for discerning heads to discover dotted about other areas. The Bullpen Stage in particular over the years played host to an array of underground boom bap talent and trusted us with our own takeovers in 2019 and 2022 where surprise guests CMPND showed up alongside our headliner Vitamin G and tore the roof off.
Curation at Nozstock is joyously eclectic, embracing a wide spectrum of styles ranging from live bands to House, Techno and a sizeable portion of Drum n Bass. With such a wide range of styles, we’ve always been impressed that they’ve never neglected to include a decent space on the line up for hip hop. Their last showing for 2024 is no exception. All the way from Atlanta, old school hip hop legends Arrested Development will be a must see main stage act. Over on the Garden Stage there’s plenty of UK fire. RLD Records/High Focus Records’ Leaf Dog and BVA will no doubt impress crowds with a huge catalogue of music to draw from.UK veteran Skitz needs no introduction, having trailblazed the production of soundsystem suitable hip hop in the UK and earned a rep as a versatile genre hopping DJ. Long time collaborator Joe Burn,equally known for blending styles, is always on form and guaranteed to shell. Head honcho of hip hop behemoth Blah Records and prolific purveyor of effortlessly funny stanzas Lee Scott will also be a big draw. Speaking of rappers who make light work of penning impressive flows that also make you laugh, festival regular Dr Syntax will also be appearing. For anyone looking to shake a leg, long time party starter’s The Nextmen will be bringing their blend of hip hop influenced bass music hosted by Kiko Bun.
As always there’s more to discover spread across the site including sets from Harvs Le Toad, Joe Publik, Jakebob and Sublingual. In particular, the Played Out Records gang are hosting a 4 hour Showcaseon the Elephants Graveyard stage on Saturday afternoon, which we have on good authority will include a special guest or two that it would be foolish to miss. For something a bit different but hip hop adjacent, Milk Poetry will be presenting the freshest poets from the UK and beyond for an eclectic spoken word bonanza. Oh and off topic though it maybe for a UK hip hop site, the DnB line up this year is ridiculous so there will certainly be no shortage of bangers to skank out to in the early hours.
It’s a real shame to see the Nozstock story end after 26 years in the festival game, but especially as it’s the last one, you’d be mad to miss it. There are limited tickets still available AND it looks like compared to the last couple months the weather might actually be relatively summery! Join us for one last dance from 18th to the 21st July! Tickets and full line up available at the links below.
https://nozstock.com/buy-tickets-online/
https://nozstock.com/line-up/
